Lottery tickets can be generally divided into instant and on-line lottery tickets. For instant lottery tickets, winning tickets are predetermined, whereas for on-line lottery tickets, winning tickets are unknown until an event, such as a number draw, takes place. The significance of this difference is that for instant lottery tickets, information about the prize is available at the time of printing and the printed ticket includes information that can be connected or related to the prize information. Thus, it is important for the instant lottery ticket and its associated prize information to be secure in order to maintain the integrity of the lottery system.
The security or integrity of a lottery system may be attacked in numerous ways. For example, an external fraudster may attempt to determine and submit winning ticket numbers by repeatedly submitting ticket information that is used to determine and allocate winnings. Such an attack may be referred to as a fishing type of attack as the fraudster is fishing for a valid winning ticket information. This type of attack may be successful if the fraudster guesses a valid winning ticket information. The system is tricked into paying the fraudster for the winning prize, assuming the prize is below a given threshold above which the prize must be redeemed in person; however the fraudster may not have purchased the ticket and has merely guessed the correct ticket information.
An internal fraudster, such as someone having access to internal lottery administration systems, may attempt to determine the location a winning ticket was sent to. The internal fraudster may then attempt to purchase tickets from the determined location, thus increasing the probability of winning. Typically, an internal fraudster will attempt to locate a winning ticket having a large prize in order to make the possibility of purchasing a large amount of tickets worthwhile.
Additionally, the security or integrity of the lottery system may be attacked through the collusion of external and internal fraudsters. Regardless of who is involved in attempting to defraud the lottery system, there are various ways of attacking the lottery system.
Previous attempts at improving the security or integrity of the lottery system have generally focused on preventing external fraudsters from pre-screening tickets for winning tickets or otherwise tampering or defrauding the lottery system.
Traditionally, instant lottery tickets were validated by scanning a validation bar-code at a ticket terminal and the terminal operator manually keyed-in a security code. Because the security code was hidden under a scratch-off material, the player and the lottery administration were given assurance that the vendor did not pre-screen the lottery ticket to pick out the winning tickets. However, the security code was not fool-proof as vendors attempted to guess the security code, which may be a 3 or 4 digit number. Moreover, human errors also contributed to errors in the validation process.
Thus, there have been attempts to further streamline the validation process by eliminating the security code and incorporating all the validation information into the bar-code. This allowed the instant lottery ticket to be verified simply by scanning the validation bar-code without manual human input. Security of such bar-codes may be increased by encrypting the bar-code contents.
However, a shortcoming of this solution was that the bar-code contained information a fraudster could use to obtain the prize information. The combination of the lottery ticket information and the security code could jeopardize the integrity of the lottery system.
Therefore, a method of bar-coding lottery information on an instant lottery ticket that increases or ensures the integrity of the lottery system would be desirable.